


A Known Unknown

by LizaKoshyVevo



Category: IT (2017), Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: F/M, Jealousy, Lumax, M/M, Mileven, Unrequited Crush, Unrequited Love, Will Add Tags As We Go, byler, ryers
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-31
Updated: 2018-01-31
Packaged: 2019-03-11 17:54:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,651
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13529535
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LizaKoshyVevo/pseuds/LizaKoshyVevo
Summary: Dr. Brenner wants Eleven, even after four years. He's willing to do anything necessary to get her back, even if that means manipulating someone from her inner circle to do the dirty work for him. Mike knew he was off-put about Richie, and eventually he understands why.





	A Known Unknown

**Author's Note:**

> The party gets to meet Mike's new cousin.

"I don't even know him... but now I have to actually share a space with him," Mike states, bringing his bike up to the bike rack, directly next to Lucas'. "We knew he was coming for a while now, and my mom said that he could get the basement, but I told her that that's specifically for the party. So then she's making space in my room for him, and I have to share my bunk bed."

As of now, he's running over all of the possibilities of how their relationship would play out. What if his cousin-- If he should say that-- tried to fit in with his friends? You know what they say... Seven's a crowd. God... It was bad enough adding Max a few years ago, and THAT he could have prevented, but his mom would, no doubt, make him invite his "cousin" into their party. 

Will shrugs his shoulders, somewhat understanding why Mike feels the way he does. At the same time, he'd love for someone around his age to be around him every day. Although he loves Jonathan... it's hard to relate to someone much older than you. "Maybe he's not that bad, you know? What if you two hit it off? He could be the brother... you never had."

Mike doesn't get the chance to respond to what Will said, before Lucas speaks up directly after Will. 

"What's his name?" Lucas asks, partly interested. He secures the right strap to his bookbag. 

Mike shakes his head, because he knows nothing of his cousin besides the fact that he's coming to stay with them... for however long. "I don't know." 

"How old is he?" Dustin asks a question, next.

Mike shakes his head again, still not knowing that answer. "I don't know. Probably 16 or 17." He finally locks his bike, and then says, "We can meet him together. My mom said that he'll be waiting there after school, so he can meet you guys when we get out."

***

As in order, Mike is first, then Lucas, Max, Dustin, and last Will, as they all pull up to Mike's house on their bikes. 

Even though Mike seems nonchalant, or even upset, on the outside, he's very nervous to greet this guy. Is nervous the right word? More so that his insides turn when he thinks about who could be inside of his house waiting for him. It was... somewhat a good, exciting feeling of when you know that your parents have a surprise waiting for you, and you've been thinking about what it could be throughout the day. But what if he was a murderer? What if he was the common trope of the person that's nice in front of adults, but is shitty to people younger than them when the parents aren't around? What if he becomes one of his best friends? There are so many possibilities. 

He figures the backdoor wouldn't be locked, and he was right. He pushes the door open, and he can hear voices, but he can't distinguish them, yet, as they are low. Holding the door open for his friends, he waits until Will is inside before closing, and locking it. 

The sound of the door closing attracts the attention of his mother, and one of the voices gets louder. "Mike? That's you?" 

He agrees, not stating that his friends are with him. He figures that she will know when she gets to the kitchen to see them. 

When Karen sees the Party, she smiles, and motions for them to follow her. "Oh good. I want you all to meet someone." They already knew where this was going, and no one said anything, only following her. It takes only seconds before they finally meet Mike's cousin, and no one could muster up a word, not even his cousin. 

Motioning over to the boy sitting on their couch, Karen introduces him immediately. "Mike, Dustin, Lucas, Will and Max, this is Richie. Richie, this is... the party," she opts out repeating all of their names again.

Mike's parents had a chance to get out their shock, and how stunningly alike Mike and Richie are, so their not caring is no surprise. The fact that Richie isn't the least bit surprised is out of the normal, but no one questions it. The party, though, just look at Richie, not seeing how he could look exactly like Mike, and Mike could look exactly like Richie. Well, they are cousins, after all. 

Richie smiles, and waves, targeting it towards Mike, but then waving at everyone next to him. 

Ted speaks up, and says, "Don't be rude." He didn't specify the person, but everyone figured it was towards them. 

Lucas and Dustin look at each other, and before they speak, Will is first. 

"Hi," is all Will says, as he's the one that doesn't find this as weird as everyone else does. Someone in Mike's family looks just like him-- big deal. It's like having a twin. Now, it would be weird if they weren't related. "I'm Will."

Following suit with their friend, each of them introduce themselves, Mike being last. It wasn't ill-intended, but he can't help but feel some sort of... animosity towards him already, even though they just met. 

Even after a few hours of hearing his friends ask Richie many questions, and how Richie wasn't too much of a talker, he can't help but feel... jealous. He already is very nice to his parents, and it seems like his friends already have taken a liking to him. So far, they know that he's named Richie Tozier, and he's 16, just like the rest of them. What if they wanted to replace him by accident? What if Richie tried to take his place? Would they believe that it was him? The whole aura of Richie made Mike wonder about him. He seems so overly nice, that it has to cover up something he's hiding. All super nice people have something offset about them, and he'd have to figure out what it was, sooner or later. 

"I don't want to share a room with him." Mike says to his mother, while she's making the dinner for the night. The rest of the party and Richie reside in the basement, so now is the perfect time to not be rude right to his cousin's face. 

Not looking up from cutting up onions, Karen asks, "Why are you being so cold to him? All he's done is be nice to you, and you're brushing him off."

"I'm not brushing him off." He is. "It's weird that he has my whole face, and it seems like I'm the only one that has common sense to feel uneasy about it." Partly true. 

Sighing, Karen agrees. "Yes, I know that it can be weird, but you're family. And he's not staying in the basement." 

"Well why can't he share a room with Holly? What about Nancy? Can't he take the living room?" He is starting to get annoyed with the fact that he knows the answer to all of his questions. 

"He's staying with you. End of discussion." She's firm about her answer, and Mike's angry sigh punctuates their conversation.

***

He told the party about how it got close to his bedtime, and they had to leave. They all had understood, and said their goodbyes to Richie, with him returning their warm goodbyes, like he had earlier with their welcomes. When Mike went down to the basement the first time, with all of them, all of them were around Richie, questioning him, and creating so much conversation. It had felt to Mike like they were visiting his cousin at the hospital. They had ignored him whenever he tried to join their conversation, and he let it slip several times, but gradually felt upset by it. He then went up to converse with his mother, and minutes later told everyone that they had to disperse. They hadn't ignored him, then. 

After brushing his teeth, he goes into his bedroom, and closes the door. He notices the fact that Richie resides in the bed above, but adjacent to his lower one, and sighs. He raises his cover and then gets under it, and rests there. Several minutes go by, but he's still awake. Usually, he can fall asleep in minutes, but now he cannot. He simply cannot bring himself to go to sleep right now, as he's not tired in the slightest. 

Instead of just staring up at the underside of a bed for hours, he opts for reading a book. Throwing the cover back, he sits up and gets out of bed. Mike grips his flashlight from his desk, and presses it on, waiting for the light to come from the other end. For a quick second, he looks over his collection, and then picks one of the books his mother got him he never bothered to read. He never really liked books. He was always more of a comic fan, but he read over his comics several times, and wanted something fresh to start on. He didn't look at the descriptions on the backs, but decided on which one to read based on how interesting the cover looks. The light drifts over Ender's Game, and the art on the front catches his attention immediately. 

He hears the covers shift behind him, but he doesn't check it. Sitting on the floor next to his desk, he opens the book and shines the light on the first pages. 

Before he can read more than a paragraph, he hears a voice speak up. 

"Nerd alert," Richie giggles. He had looked over the comic books and toy figures in Mike's room when he walked in, and thought the same. He watched Mike look over his books from the darkness, thought the same, and only chose now to say something. 

Looking up from his book, he flashes towards his cousin's face. He notices that he's still wearing his glasses, even though he's supposed to be going to sleep, or rather, asleep already. "Shut up and go to sleep." He's back to the second paragraph.

Richie's expression drops, but Mike cannot see that. "Sorry," he apologizes. He still watches Mike, but only in silence this time. 

"Why are you here?" Mike asks bluntly, not looking up. His mother still didn't tell him why Richie is here, only that he was coming. 

Richie doesn't respond for a long while, almost making Mike believe that he was asleep, until he does. "My mom abandoned me." It's something that Richie came to terms with, but it still left a sour feeling in his heart to say those... words. He knows they aren't true. Can't be. 

When Mike hears that, it makes him feel for his cousin for a bit, but the initial dislike is still there. Now it's his turn to apologize. "I'm sorry."

"Oh, did she run away with you?" Richie retorts, jokingly. That didn't go well with Mike, though.

Mike tilts the light upwards, so that Richie can see his expression. It isn't a pleasant one.

He doesn't get the hint, and goes on, "Well your mom is next, then. She already fucking loves me," he smiles, and then he halfway buries his face into his pillow after he says that.

He swears. "That's your aunt, you dummy." Richie's comment is received in poor taste with Mike, and makes sure that's known. 

Richie purses the side of his mouth, and doesn't respond after that. He wants to, but decides not to. 

Mike sighs, and closes his book. "You're annoying, you know that?" His response is very rude, and he wishes that he wasn't so mean to people he was jealous of. 

"Sorry," his cousin says again, and this time no conversation follows after.

***

"And they planned a whole fu-- freaking funeral after a week?" Richie asks Will, and then the orange-haired girl next to him agrees. 

"That's what I said!" When she first heard the story, it didn't make sense. But she can't wait for him to hear all of the story-- if he does. 

Will nods, chuckling at Richie's switch of his original word. "But see, it's that... someone else drowned, and they thought it was me." He pauses, then continues. "And now they call me 'Zombie boy', still."

"Zombie boy--" Richie starts, but right as he's repeating the name, the basement door opens, revealing Dustin and Lucas. Instead of finishing what he originally wants to say, he greets both of the familiar faces. "Hi," He smiles, greeting Dustin first, and looking him head-to-toe unintentionally, through his large glasses. He... likes the way he looks. Bypassing that thought, he greets Lucas next. 

Dustin simply repeated the same response, but Lucas greets him with a "Hey, man, what's up" and immediately goes to hug his girlfriend the second she stands up. 

With his normal expression, his upper lip raised, he watches as Dustin sits next to Max, and how Max sits in the middle of both Lucas and Dustin, now. He closes his mouth and goes back to paying his full attention to Will. 

It's an early Saturday morning, but Will and Dustin wanted to do their homework early. Crazy, yes, but why pile everything up until Sunday night? Well, that makes perfect sense to Richie. He was always the type to keep his grades up, do exceptionally well on tests, and not procrastinate, despite his known reputation. One reason was that he always wanted to do well in school to make his mother proud, but she never seemed to pay too much mind to that. Or him. 

Although awkward to sit down in the basement with the party while they did homework, what else was there to do? When the majority of them move towards the table, he still stays on the couch. But after a few moments, he decides to go upstairs to read some of his own material that he brought with him, but he can't help to stop by the table to see what they're working on so far. 

Mike looks over at Will's papers for a second, double-taking. "That's wrong."

Will looks up, and makes eye contact with Mike before returning them back to his work. "Which one?" He asks, considering that there are many problems that he's working on. 

"That one," Mike points to number six. "You're supposed to divide right there. And with the amount of minutes for 10 hours, it's 600 minutes, and 600 divided by three minutes comes to 200, so if 200 people watch a three minute video, they'd watch 600 minutes, or 10 hours." 

Will doesn't even question the math, only erasing it and writing in exactly what Mike had said. No matter if the new math is wrong or not, he trusts what Mike's saying. He felt a lot more of these were wrong, but on the bright side, he would be able to have Mike help him fix them. 

Pointing down at Dustin's paper, he singles out a specific line. "Ad hominem," he blurts out, causing for Dustin to look up at him. 

"What?" He asks, confused about what Richie is talking about. 

Richie diverts his eyes. "You're supposed to highlight or unerline all of the logical fallacies. The author. He's using ad hominem." He smiles a small smile, after he says that. 

Dustin reads over the sentence that the other is referring to, and he can clearly see how he missed that part of the text. He places his highlighter back up towards the top of his paper, and goes over the entire part using ad hominem. "Thank you," Dustin thanks him, and smiles back.

Butterflies erupt in Richie's stomach, and his smile doesn't leave his face. Luckily the others are too buried in their work to see it. He couldn't wait to finally start school with all of them next week. 

***

**Author's Note:**

> I don't ship Dustin and Richie. Short, I know.


End file.
